MILLIMETER

"Music and Angels"



Iara Lee's documentary, "Modulations", covers a lot of ground. It tracks the evolution of electronic music over several decades, features nearly 80 artists, takes place in 20 cities - including Los Angeles, London, Berlin, and Tokyo - and is the lean remainder of 300 hours of footage captured by the small globetrotting crew.

Just as the musical subject is a fusion of various styles, the film is a mixture of formats. Lee shot club footage of artists in action on 16mm with a Bolex and supplemented with Super 8. Interviews went down on Panasonic's DVCPRO.

Avid editor Paula Heredia manipulated speed and color at Lee's behest for some funky, undocumentary-like sequences. "I experimented a lot," Lee says. "Sometimes, it's tough to distinguish between experiments and accidents."

The film debuted as a 35mm blowup at Sundance. It has since played at a few dozen more festivals including the Berlin International Film Festival, New York's Gen Art Film Festival, and the Boston Women's Film Festival.

"Modulations" lived up to its subtitle - "Cinema for the Ear" - with a luxurious sound mix. It is the first film completely mixed with TMH's Microtheater monitoring system, which THX standard creator Tomlinson Holman designed. The system allows for surround sound in small rooms.

"That system actually came from James Cameron's living room. He had that for 'Titanic', but for him it was like a toy," Lee laughs.

Mark Jan Wlodarkiewicz, who has features including "Wag The Dog" to his credit, mixed the sound for "Modulations" with Digidesign's Pro Tools.

"This film was made with the help of a lot of angels," says Lee, alluding to friends who worked at reduced rate, including Flame artist Damion Clayton, who animated some sophisticated, design-heavy interstitials for the film.

Matt Cheplic